Great book . . .

I've met this guy before. His name is Carl Medearis. I first bumped into his story-telling ability (and amazing cross-cultural sensitivity) several years ago. Sarita and I decided we wanted to share his stories with our customers at Sonlight Curriculum. So we paid to have about six or seven of his stories narrated, duplicated on CDs, and mailed to our customers as a Christmas present.

Since then, I have met Carl in person and have also seen some of his new books.

The following story is from his latest, out since last July, Speaking of Jesus: The Art of Not-Evangelism. (I'm astonished. The Kindle version right now is FREE.) But whether free or purchased, I'm intrigued by what Carl has to say.

Before we get to the story, let me note how Carl introduces his theme or purpose in the book. He writes:

The story is told of the Sunday-school teacher who was having a tough time getting her class to participate. So she decided to ask an easy question: “What’s gray, has a bushy tail, and stores nuts for the winter?” The children looked at one another and didn’t say a word. Finally, brave little Johnny raised his hand and said, “I know the answer must be Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me.”

It seems to me that we all are like little Johnny—we all know the answer is Jesus. We believe it. We say it. Yet, woefully, perhaps shamefully, our answers tend to be scripted even when they don’t make sense. I hope that in the following pages I can help you overcome that.

From what I have read so far, I think he may succeed.

Okay. Now for the story.

One day I saw my Muslim-Arab friend sweating as he talked with my other friend, a fine, conservative-minded evangelical Christian. It looked like the two had locked horns in a battle to the death. It happened here in Colorado this past summer.

We hosted a gathering of some of our longtime friends from the Middle East and brought in a bunch of American Christian friends to talk about God, the Middle East, and how to bring hope to Muslim countries.

There were about forty-five of us together for three days. We were having a great time—until I looked over and saw these two all tangled up.

The next thing I knew, my Muslim friend . . . had gone out on the deck and was smoking a cigarette like his life depended on how fast he could suck it down. I walked out and nonchalantly said, “What’s up, bro?”

His response: “Why the $%&^@ do these people want to convert me? Why can’t they just leave me alone? I know that you don’t want to convert me. Right?”

Talk about a loaded question full of semantic nuance. Here’s my answer and what happened.

I asked him what he thought my other friend wanted to convert him to. He said, “He wants me to be a Christian, but I’m a Muslim.” I asked him what he thought this friend meant by becoming a Christian.

“He wants me to stop living in the Middle East and loving my family.”

I told him I was pretty sure that’s not what this friend meant, but if that’s what “conversion to Christianity” is, then I agreed—he shouldn’t convert.

“See,” he said to me, “I knew you weren’t into conversion.”

“No I’m not,” I said. “Not like that. Not at all. I think you should stay in your country, love your family, and be who God has made you to be.”

Then I asked him this: “What do you think God thinks when He looks down at all 6.5 billion people on earth?”

“He thinks they’re all screwed up,” he said.

“Yep, that’s what I think God’s thinking too. So what do you think God would like to do with all these messed-up people? Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, nothings, everyone?”

He had never thought of that before, so he wasn’t sure. But he did say God would probably want to “help them not be so screwed up.”

I agreed. “So you might say that God would like to convert all 6.5 billion people on earth. Not to a religion, but to Himself. He would like everyone to be like Him. To be converted into Him. But how would He do that? He’d need a converter.”

I went on to tell my friend that if he bought an appliance here in the States and took it back to the Middle East, he’d need something to change the current from 110 to 220 volts. “What’s that called?” I asked him.

“A transformer or converter,” he said.

“That’s right. So what is God’s transformer to get us all back the way God wants us to be? To change us? To convert us?”

He gasped (literally) and said, “It’s Jesus. I never thought of that—but it’s Jesus. He’s the converter.” He got so excited he called his wife out and told her the whole conversation. She started to cry. We sat on the deck and prayed that God’s “converter” or “transformer” would change us into the current that can be connected to God. And that He would do this with all of our friends.

It was a profound moment. Amazing that just a half hour earlier he was about to bite this other guy’s head off for “trying to convert” him and now he sat with me in tears praying.

One more story? A little indicator of where he is heading in the book.

This one comes way up front, close to the beginning of Chapter 1:

I recently visited a missions school at a large church in Waco, Texas, and decided to try a . . . test. . . .

“Tell me,” I said to the group, “what is the gospel?”

A young lady raised her hand. “The free gift of God.”

“Good,” I said. I went to the chalkboard and wrote gift from God. “Somebody else?”

“Freedom from sin,” a man near the back called out.

“Eternal life,” said another.

“Keep going,” I said. I stayed busy at the chalkboard, listing the items as they came in.

Freedom. Righteousness. Moral purity. Grace. Unconditional love. Healing and deliverance. Redemption. Faith in God. New life.

After five minutes or so, we had filled the chalkboard with a list of things that we believed were the gospel.

“Excellent,” I said. “Did we miss anything?”

The room was silent for a minute. I could see heads turning. I could hear pages rustling. Everybody seemed to think there was something significant missing, but nobody wanted to volunteer to name the missing item.

Finally, after the second minute of silence, a girl near the front raised her hand. “How come none of us mentioned Jesus?”

BINGO! --She made the point that Carl had wanted to make from the beginning. For the rest of Chapter 1, he tells how 1 Corinthians 2:1-3 (“When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling”) came to be his life verse.

Inspiring!

I encourage you to get your own copy. You may find it hard to put down.

Interesting--and disturbing--perspective on Iran . . .

Please ignore the fact that it's part of a (very long) advertisement. I think the primary story of a 1,354-year-old conflict that looks as if it is just now about to break out into all-out war is rather compelling.

Please go to this page. As soon as the video begins to load, click on the "x" in the tab control for your internet browser as if you intend to close the window. You will be given the opportunity to read the document rather than have to wait interminably for a voice-over to narrate it to you as it shows you each line in video form. (Trust me: unless you read at some horrendously slow pace, you will do much better reading the key information on your own!)

You want to hit the "Cancel" option in the "Confirm" screen that will pop up ["Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" --No. You don't. You must want to read the page rather than have to listen to the boring voice-over video.]

So click "Cancel" and then do a search for The Murder That's About to Change the World.

Start reading there.

It's a great story well written.

. . . Again, I am not recommending the sales copy or the investment services that are touted beginning immediately after the story.

I am just saying I think the story itself is probably well worth you trouble to read.

Personally, I'd quit where the author says,

Iran is ready to assert its place in the world. Think Japan or Germany in the 1930s. The threat is there, it's large, and it's not going away anytime soon.

How the world responds, we can't know.

The future of free speech in the United States?

From the Dearborn, Michigan, Islamic Festival 2009: "Welcome to Sharia--and dhimmitude--in America."

Introduction (1:34):



Follow-through (10:00):



And "the rest of the story" (2:45):

Islam: A religion of violence?

The Sonlight forums have had a fairly lengthy discussion that arose when someone posted the following thesis statement and invitation for response:

From the Mouths of American Muslims: Praising the Ft. Hood Shooter . . . Here is evidence that true Islam is a religion of violence (by CNN!):


Your comments?

It took several hours to wade through the entire "conversation" and to think about what it all meant, but I finally came to a conclusion:

As you may recall, back in May and June of '07 I brought up Mark Steyn's book, America Alone. I was very concerned about the problem that [the original poster in this thread] has attempted to bring up here. And I will admit that, at the end of that set of conversations, I was still not settled at all in my mind. Indeed, I was still perplexed that, it seemed, so many of my forum-mates . . . were so "relaxed" about violent Islam.

If you go to , you will find the ice almost melted through. But, obviously, not quite.

Today I think it did melt. The conversation here finally did the trick.

I wrote back then,

Mark Steyn notes in America Alone that too few of us in the West are aware of the different sects of Islam--Wahhabi, Deobandi, Sunni, Shiite, Sufi. . . .

Steyn points out that Saudi Arabia, the great exporter of Islam worldwide at this point in history, exports Wahhabi Islam--the most "radical" and violent version.

What I realized today, here, is that we must, indeed, distinguish these various sects . . . Just as those of us who are "way" on the "inside" of Christianity recognize there are huge differences between Pentecostals and Baptists, Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Eastern Orthodox, Charismatics and United Methodists, Mennonites and Christian Reconstructionists, Old-Earthers and Young-Earthers, Theistic Evolutionists and Six-24-hour-day Creationists, a-millennialists, pre-millennialists and post-millennialists [and so on and so forth] . . . so we who are on the outside of Islam need to recognize the differences between Wahhabis (who are, indeed, the most "radical" and violent) and Sufis (from south Asia, who tend to be way "laid back") and Sunnis and Shias and all the rest. And, yes, even within each sect, and among the members of each sect, we need to recognize that there are going to be individual differences.

I had not thought of that before.

Just as we, if we are of an Old-Earth persuasion, hate to have someone from the "outside" tell us what we "have to" believe about creation, or if we are of a Brethren/Mennonite or even an historical Baptistic perspective on law and politics don't want someone telling us we "must" follow the teachings of Christian Reconstruction, or if we are paedo-baptists (i.e., people who believe in infant baptism) we take issue with those who tell us we are completely ignoring biblical teaching on the subject [and so on and so forth], so, too, we need to be careful about telling Muslims--or speaking of Muslims--as "having" to believe one way or another . . . "because the Q'uran teaches _______."

YES, some Christians are convinced the Bible teaches six-24-hour-day creation about 6,000 years ago. But others among us believe very differently. So, too: YES, some Christians are convinced the Bible teaches that all of civil society should be conformed to the civil law as outlined in the Old Testament. But others among us believe very differently.

So, too, with Muslims.

I see that, now.

And I thank [certain participants in this thread] for pushing the issue far enough . . . and [and certain] others pushing back hard enough . . . that I now see the analogy and think I can understand where I--and, I believe, our society as a whole--needs to go.

My conclusion: Mark Steyn was correct; he is correct: we need to learn far more about Islam . . . 1) so we understand where different people are likely to be coming from and, then, 2) to delve deeper to understand each individual person's perspectives.

*******
Immediately after the above post, I then added the following:

I saw this cartoon in The Week:


I thought it provides a nice hat-tip to what I was trying to say up-thread. Personally, I think there is reason to do some "profiling"; at the same time, there is reason for discernment and caution.

Hope you can enjoy the cartoon!

Oh. And one last comment.

Somehow, what the Muslim guys in the video at the top of this post say reminds me of footage I've seen from (and of) certain demonstrators who claim to be the mouthpieces of the Christian God. Don't they do the same for you?

For example:


If you are reading this post in Facebook, you should know that the original is on my personal blog.

How a society dies

Telling article from today's (London) Daily Mail: British police running from Muslim demonstrators, a Christian nurse facing the sack for offering to pray for a patient - this is the way a society dies.

Suspended: Caroline Petrie offered to pray to help a patient recover.
. . . And the Muslim protesters chasing the police. (Warning: Strong language.):

"All roads do not lead to God, but . . ."

I received a copy of the Christmas letter sent by some friends of ours who are working with Frontiers, the mission to Muslims.

The husband wrote about attending a Sunday school class at his church where

they were teaching about all the things the Qur’an teaches about Jesus. For instance did you know that the Qur'an teaches that:

1. Jesus was born of a virgin named Mary.
2. Jesus is righteous.
3. Jesus is sinless.
4. Jesus performed miracles.
5. Jesus is a word from God.
6. Jesus is alive in heaven today.
7. Jesus will return to earth on the Day of Judgment.
8. Jesus' name is Messiah and he is a mercy from God.

And much, much more. . .

My friend continued,

In many places where we have workers many Muslims are finding Jesus in their own Qur'ans. They are also finding him through dreams, visions and miracles.

It is like a great quote I once heard, "All roads do not lead to God but God can be found walking on all roads." Praise God He is bringing His good news to distant lands and allows us to get involved with Him.

Amen.

Freedom of speech dies when no one is willing to defend it

Just heard about "the latest" surrender of freedom without so much as a whimper . . . much less a fight.

Forget "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Forget the attitude and commitment attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Apparently, Americans are now more inclined, simply, to turn tail and walk away.

And so our vaunted right to free speech is, I'm afraid, quickly disappearing. . . . And I think few Americans want to hear about it.

The Jewel of Medina, a debut novel by journalist Sherry Jones, 46, was due to be published [August 12] and an eight-city publicity tour had been scheduled. . . .

[However,] Jones said that she was shocked to learn in May, that publication would be postponed indefinitely.

Want to guess why it was postponed?

Yep. It touches on Mohammed.

The novel traces the life of A'isha from her engagement to Mohammed, when she was six, until the prophet's death. . . .

"I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammed ... I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder," said Jones.

[But] Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry said in a statement the company received "cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, [and] also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

He added: "In this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel."

Jones, who has just completed a sequel to the novel examining her heroine's later life, is free to sell her book to other publishers, Perry said.

Random House is so nice, isn't it?

But then I find some additional articles.

The book is by no means "high literature" (fancy that!). But it appears well-structured. (You can read the prologue here.)

Some claim it is a trashy bodice-ripper. I do not know. I saw no "bodice-ripping" tendencies in the prologue. It is written in the style of most modern fiction: lots of real or implicit conflict and tension. Rather florid descriptions. But, if anything, Muhammad is portrayed as an astonishingly sensitive and considerate man--far more saintly and ready to offer grace and forgiveness than one might expect of a powerful man married to a wayward child bride.

But the real story, it seems to me, is all about the publishing process . . . and how the book came to be "postponed" in the first place.

It seems there was a certain professor from the University of Texas, a Denise Spellberg, associate professor of Islamic history, who had something to do with what happened. As Asra Q. Nomani wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

In April, looking for endorsements, Random House sent galleys to writers and scholars, including Denise Spellberg. . . . Ms. Jones put her on the list because she read Ms. Spellberg's book, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha Bint Abi Bakr.

But Ms. Spellberg wasn't a fan of Ms. Jones's book. On April 30, Shahed Amanullah, a guest lecturer in Ms. Spellberg's classes and the editor of a popular Muslim Web site, got a frantic call from her. "She was upset," Mr. Amanullah recalls. He says Ms. Spellberg told him the novel "made fun of Muslims and their history," and asked him to warn Muslims.

In an interview, Ms. Spellberg told me the novel is a "very ugly, stupid piece of work." The novel, for example, includes a scene on the night when Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha: "the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion's sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life."

Says Ms. Spellberg: "I walked through a metal detector to see 'Last Temptation of Christ,'" the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. "I don't have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can't play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography." . . .

Sorry. I have to stop the narrative, here, for a moment.

Spellberg says she herself "walked through a metal detector" in order to ensure she took the opportunity to watch a "soft core porn" depiction of Christian sacred history, but she feels the need to warn Muslims of potential offense before they can judge a similar work [or, based on what little I know of either the movie or the book, a potentially less offensive work] on its own merits?

Sorry. Something seems rather hypocritical, here, to me.

But back to the narrative.

We're told Spellberg doesn't have a problem with historical fiction, but, somehow (perhaps following a conversion at or shortly after having viewed "The Last Temptation of Christ"?), she does have a problem with the "deliberate misinterpretation of history" in the form of "play[ing] with a sacred history and turn[ing] it into soft core pornography."

And so, according to Nomani, . . .

After he got the call from Ms. Spellberg, Mr. Amanullah dashed off an email to a listserv of Middle East and Islamic studies graduate students, acknowledging he didn't "know anything about it [the book]," but telling them, "Just got a frantic call from a professor who got an advance copy of the forthcoming novel, 'Jewel of Medina' -- she said she found it incredibly offensive." He added a write-up about the book from the Publishers Marketplace, an industry publication.

The next day, a blogger known as Shahid Pradhan posted Mr. Amanullah's email on a Web site for Shiite Muslims -- "Hussaini Youth" -- under a headline, "upcoming book, 'Jewel of Medina': A new attempt to slander the Prophet of Islam." Two hours and 28 minutes after that, another person by the name of Ali Hemani proposed a seven-point strategy to ensure "the writer withdraws this book from the stores and apologise all the muslims across the world."

Meanwhile back in New York City, Jane Garrett, an editor at Random House's Knopf imprint, dispatched an email on May 1 to Knopf executives, telling them she got a phone call the evening before from Ms. Spellberg (who happens to be under contract with Knopf to write "Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an.")

"She thinks there is a very real possibility of major danger for the building and staff and widespread violence," Ms. Garrett wrote.

Sorry. Feel the need to interrupt once more.

Let's see. Why would Spellberg think there is such a real possibility of major danger? Is this just a "feeling"? Or . . . could she herself have played an integral role in spreading the flames?

"Denise says it is 'a declaration of war . . . explosive stuff . . . a national security issue.' Thinks it will be far more controversial than the satanic verses and the Danish cartoons. Does not know if the author and Ballantine folks are clueless or calculating, but thinks the book should be withdrawn ASAP." ("The Jewel of Medina" was to be published by Random House's Ballantine Books.)

That day, the email spread like wildfire through Random House, which also received a letter from Ms. Spellberg and her attorney, saying she would sue the publisher if her name was associated with the novel. On May 2, a Ballantine editor told Ms. Jones's agent the company decided to possibly postpone publication of the book.

On a May 21 conference call, Random House executive Elizabeth McGuire told the author and her agent that the publishing house had decided to indefinitely postpone publication of the novel for "fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims" and concern for "the safety and security of the Random House building and employees."

And now, with that as background, Spellberg writes in a subsequent Wall Street Journal letter, "I Didn't Kill 'The Jewel of Medina.'"

No. I'm sure not! [Sarcasm.]

There is a long history of anti-Islamic polemic that uses sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith. This novel follows in that oft-trodden path, one first pioneered in medieval Christian writings.

The novel provides no new reading of Aisha's life, but actually expands upon provocative themes regarding Muhammad's wives first found in an earlier novel by Salman Rushdie, "The Satanic Verses," which I teach. I do not espouse censorship of any kind, but I do value my right to critique those who abuse the past without regard for its richness or resonance in the present.

The combination of sex and violence sells novels. When combined with falsification of the Islamic past, it exploits Americans who know nothing about Aisha or her seventh-century world and counts on stirring up controversy to increase sales. If Ms. Nomani and readers of the Journal wish to allow literature to "move civilization forward," then they should read a novel that gets history right.

What's this about a "right to critique"?

I think "Artemis," in response to the post Clueless Dhimmitude and Denise Spellberg, on the Stop the ACLU blog, has it about right:

Production on a book takes up to or over a year. This book was going to press and would be released in two months.

Spellberg was not asked for a critique, or to give advice on whether to publish or whether the book was factual enough to be deemed worthy of publication. She was sent an ARC (advanced reader copy) in the hopes of an endorsement for the cover.

Random House was committed. It had paid an advance, edited the book, designed the cover and sold it to booksellers by the time the ARC was sent to her. That is how a publishing timeline works. The text had been set in type already, or there would not have even been an ARC yet. The investments had all been made.

Random House had already decided whether the book was worthy of publication on the basis of style or whatever else might qualify under critiques like "trashy" or "literary" or even "historically accurate." They did not need Dr. Spellberg to advise them on that part of their job and it was too late in the process for them to request it of her. Since Dr. Spellberg has a book undergoing the same timeline, she knew this.

Dr. Spellberg says in her letter to the WSJ today that she merely critiqued. Hardly. She played the trump card of potential violence to get her way and to sidetrack this book.

She did not care for the book’s style or content? Fine. She should have declined to endorse and left it at that, and saved her true critique for reviews once it was published. But she did not want it published, so she pulled out the stops.

She continues to speak of the book presenting the history of Islam incorrectly, but she has not in any way itemized incorrect facts. The bottom line seems to be that she does not care for the author’s interpretation and presentation of history because it does not fit with her own view of how it should be seen. It does not, in her opinion, get history "right"--an odd concept coming from a professional historian. She deems it too trashy, not literary enough for such an important subject in the least. Or, I suspect, at most.

So now we are going to have people stopping the presses, speaking darkly of potential violence, marshalling intimidation tactics, based on dislike of an author’s vision and style?

And we will have [various commentators] basically saying "don’t get your knickers in a twist over this because the book is not well written and looks to me to be a bodice-ripper and popular fiction is less worthy of protection. Now if it were to MY literary taste, THEN you should have some concerns."

. . . And that, ultimately, is the real issue, isn't it?

It is the whole matter of how far a society will go in, as the title of a certain book I own says, Defending the Undefendable.

Are Americans willing to defend the principle of freedom of speech--which, obviously, only needs a real defense when the speech involved is offensive to some person (or group of persons) or another and not when it is wholly uncontroversial-- . . . or are we unwilling to defend it?

Religious Liberty: the pivotal issue in Christian-Muslim relations

A friend of mine forwarded me a copy of the following article. I then went back to the original source to acquire this version. It seems worthy of broad dissemination and consideration:

Religious Liberty: the pivotal issue in these pivotal days
-- Apostasy, and the baptism of Madgi Allam
By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC) Special to ASSIST News Service

AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- Historically the outcome of pivotal moments in Christian-Muslim relations have been determined by military might: the Arab Muslim conquest of the Byzantine Jerusalem (AD 638); the Arab Muslim conquest of Byzantine Heliopolis; Egypt (AD 640); the Ottoman Muslim conquest of Byzantine Serbian Kosovo (1389); the Ottoman Muslim capture of the capital of Byzantium, Constantinople (1453); the European victory over the Ottomans in the Battle of Vienna (1683); the Serb re-conquest of Kosovo (1913); the Allied victory over the Ottomans in WW1 (1919); the Allied victory over the Muslim-Nazi Alliance in WW2 (1945); the NATO-enabled Muslim re-reconquest of Kosovo (1998-2008) . These battle and many others like them demonstrated who was ascendant and determined who was in control.

For several decades now the West has been advancing global openness through its revolution in communication and information technologies. But openness poses an existential threat to repressive dictatorships, corrupt systems and false religions. Now, in a fight for their survival, repressive dictatorships, corrupt systems and false religions are seeking to protect themselves by rolling back liberties and erecting bulwarks: repressing information and punishing dissent.

Because Islam is a global as distinct from a local phenomenon, the apostaphobic dictators of Islam are of necessity forced to pursue not only a revival of repressive, punitive Sharia in Muslim countries, but the extension of Sharia beyond the Muslim world and into the international arena through the Islamisation of human rights and laws. To this end, they use the threat of "uncontrollable" Islamic violence as leverage. (See LINK 1)

Today we are again at a pivotal moment in Christian-Muslim and Western-Muslim relations. However this time the outcome is not going to be determined by military might, but on the strength of moral and ideological convictions. Unfortunately, that is exactly why the West is in danger, for while Islam is weak militarily it is strong on conviction, the West is strong militarily but weak on conviction. The West will either buckle, surrender and submit, handing Islam the ascendancy, or it will brace itself and stand firm for what it believes (if in fact it can remember what that is).

By his very public Easter baptism of the high profile Egypt-born Italian journalist and Muslim convert to Catholicism, Magdi Allam, Pope Benedict has made a decisive and very courageous statement in defence of religious liberty, specifically a Muslim's right to convert.

Meanwhile back in Egypt, as the Great Apostasy Debate heats up, the Supreme Constitutional Court has been asked to rule on whether civil laws permitting religious freedom violate Article 2 of the Constitution which specifies that Islam is the religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia). See report by Compass Direct: Egypt: Ex-Muslims Blocked from Declaring Conversion, 26 March 2008.

THE BAPTISM OF MAGDI ALLAM

Magdi Allam is the deputy director of the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. As a professing but nominal Muslim, Allam wrote many pieces that were critical of Islam and supportive of Israel. Because of this, Allam has received death threats and had fatwas issued against him, requiring him to live under police protection for the past five years.

The terrorism he has witnessed and the persecution he has suffered drove him to re-examine Islam and to reassess Christianity, especially after Pope Benedict's September 2006 address at Regensburg, which highlighted the unreasonableness of violence in religion.

Magdi Allam testifies: "Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace -- the healthy fruit of a long, matured gestation, lived in suffering and joy, together with intimate reflection and conscious and manifest expression . . . The miracle of Christ's resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness . . . " (For Magdi Allam's testimony, see LINK 2)

Magdi Allam was baptised by Pope Benedict XVI in St Peter's on Easter Saturday during the Easter vigil. (LINK 3)

Numerous Islamic scholars immediately condemned the event. Aref Ali Nayed, director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, Jordan, criticised what he called "the Vatican's deliberate and provocative act of baptising Allam on such a special occasion and in such a spectacular way. It is sad," said Nayed, "that the intimate and personal act of a religious conversion is made into a triumphalist tool for scoring points." Nayed opined that this would negatively impact Christian-Muslim dialogue, and called on the Vatican to "distance itself from Allam's discourse". (LINK 4)

Yahya Pallavicini, a Milanese imam who is the vice-president of Italy's Islamic Religious Community, patronisingly described Allam's baptism "as an 'honest intellectual mistake' that had been committed with the complicity of the Vatican". Pallavicini told Italy's Adnkronos International (AKI) that he was embarrassed by the Pope's "indelicate choice of advisors" -- as if the Pope is without authority or lacking discernment and is vulnerable to the machinations of cunning Islamophobic conspirators! (LINK 5)

AKI reported: "Pallavicini agreed with Nayed in his attack on the baptism saying it put at risk the dialogue between Muslims and Christians." The implication is that Christian-Muslim dialogue can only proceed if the Church agrees to honour Islam's claim to life-long legal ownership of the hearts and minds and bodies of all Muslims irrespective of the individual's basic human right to believe according to his/her reason and conscience. Such a caveat leaves little space for meaningful dialogue.

Like Nayed and Pallavicini, Italy's deputy foreign minister for Middle East affairs, Ugo Intini, also criticised Allam's "very harsh condemnation" of Islam and called on the Vatican "after the emphasis given to Allam's conversion, to distance itself clearly from his statements".

However, the Vatican made it very clear that the Church not only believes in the religious liberty of all people (including Muslims), it also believes in the liberty of its members.

As Vatican spokesman Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi noted, Magdi Allam "has the right to express his own ideas. They remain his personal opinions without in any way becoming the official expression of the positions of the pope or the Holy See . . . believers are free to maintain their own ideas on a vast range of questions and problems on which legitimate pluralism exists among Christians. Welcoming a new believer into the church clearly does not mean espousing all that person's ideas and opinions, especially on political and social matters." (LINK 6)

"THE RISK OF THIS BAPTISM"

According to Father Lombardi "the pope accepted the risk of this baptism" in order "to affirm the freedom of religious choice which derives from the dignity of the human person".

According to his testimony, which is written in the form of a letter to the director of Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, Magdi Allam accepted the risk of this baptism for the same reason.

"Dear Director, you asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another, and much more grave, death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith. And I will be more so after the courageous and historical gesture of the Pope, who, as soon has he knew of my desire, immediately agreed to personally impart the Christian sacraments of initiation to me. His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytising in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.

"For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those 'fortuitous events' that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on Sept. 3, 2003 was entitled 'The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts'. It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope's historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves. If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world? I pray to God that on this special Easter he give the gift of the resurrection of the spirit to all the faithful in Christ who have until now been subjugated by fear."

THE POWER OF FAITH

Of all the commentary on this event, none has been more powerful or perceptive than that written by "Spengler" of Asia Times on-Line. Spengler's piece entitled "The mustard seed in global strategy" can be found at LINK 7 and is a "must read" piece.

Spengler describes the baptism of Allam as a "revolution in world affairs . . . begun in the heart of one man".

He writes: "Osama bin Laden recently accused [Pope] Benedict of plotting a new crusade against Islam, and instead finds something far more threatening: faith the size of a mustard seed that can move mountains . . .

"Magdi Allam presents an existential threat to Muslim life, whereas other prominent dissidents, for example Ayaan Hirsi Ali, offer only an annoyance . . . Why would Muslims trade the spiritual vacuum of Islam for the spiritual sewer of Dutch hedonism? The souls of Muslims are in agony. The blandishments of the decadent West offer them nothing but shame and deracination. Magdi Allam agrees with his former co-religionists in repudiating the degraded culture of the modern West, and offers them something quite different: a religion founded upon love."

Spengler is correct when he writes: "If the Church fights for the safety of converts, they will emerge from the nooks and crannies of Muslim communities in Europe."

While governments may waver and even fail, the Church must stand firm in faith irrespective of the cost, and advance according to the word of God: "'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord of hosts." (Zechariah 4:6 ESV).

-- Elizabeth Kendal

LINKS

1) OIC: Eliminating "defamation" of Islam.
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty News & Analysis
By Elizabeth Kendal, 25 March 2008
http://www.worldevangelicals.org/commissions/rlc/reports/articles.htm?id=1725
ALSO
Religious Liberty Trends 2007-2008
(Apostasy, Apostaphobia and Postmodernism)
http://www.worldevangelicals.org/commissions/rlc/reports/articles.htm?id=1666

2) Magdi Allam Recounts His Path to Conversion
http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-22151

3) Pope baptizes prominent Italian Muslim
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Sat 22 March 2008.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080322/ap_on_re_eu/pope_muslim_convert
For PICTURES (with Italian text):
La conversione di Magdi Allam fa il giro del mondo. 23 Marzo 2008
http://www.corriere.it/cronache/08_marzo_23/conversione_Allam_mondo_88b7c6c0-f8e8-11dc-8874-0003ba99c667.shtml

4) Scholar denounces Muslim baptism. BBC 26 March 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7313870.stm

5) Italy: Islamist website attacks Vatican baptism. 26 March2008
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.2008599217
Muslim Scholar Denounces Vatican Baptism
By FRANCES D'EMILIO – 26 march 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jmjHmHDjMG4Qhj3beZWc-IXP2bOQD8VKJV683

6) Vatican: Muslim convert has right to express his own ideas
By Cindy Wooden. 28 March 2008
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=27354

7) The mustard seed in global strategy
By Spengler, 26 March 2008
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC26Aa01.html

Elizabeth Kendal is the Principal Researcher and Writer for the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC) http://www.worldevangelicals.org/. This article was initially written for the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty News & Analysis mailing list.

According to a notice at the bottom of the original source, "You may republish this story with proper attribution."

Robert Spencer's Proposals vis-a-vis Islam and the West

I promised to go beyond Mark Steyn's comments about what the West--and the United States, especially--can and should do with respect to Islam and so-called "radical Muslims."

Here are Robert Spencer's proposals from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). I'll begin with the guts of pp. 224-228. Please recognize that all emboldened text is bolded by me to highlight the most concise statements of what I believe are Spencer's practical proposals.

Am I calling for a war between Christianity and Islam? Certainly not. What I am calling for is a general recognition that we are already in a war between two vastly different ideas of how to govern states and order societies, and that in this struggle the West has nothing to apologize for and a great deal to defend. Indeed, the struggle against sharia is nothing less than a struggle for universal human rights, a concept that originated in the West and is denied by Islam. Everyone in the fractured and fractious West--Christians, Jews, other religious believers, atheist humanists--ought to be able to agree that this is a concept worth defending, even if they disagree about the particulars.

What we are fighting today is not . . . a "war on terror." Terror is a tactic, not an opponent. To wage a "war on terror" is like waging a "war on bombs"; it focuses on a tool of the enemy rather than the enemy itself. A refusal to identify the enemy is extremely dangerous: It leaves those who refuse vulnerable to being blindsided--as proven by the White House access granted by both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to now-jailed jihadists such as Abdurrahman Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian.

A forthright acknowledgement that we are facing a renewed jihad would go a long way to preventing that sort of diplomatic and intelligence embarrassment. . . . Jihad terrorists have declared war on the U.S. and other non-Muslim nations--all the U.S. and Western European countries need to do is identify the enemy as they have identified themselves. . . .

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush warned the world, "You're either with the terrorists or you're with us." But because of official Washington's persistent refusal to acknowledge exactly who the terrorists are and why they are fighting, that bold line in the sand has been obscured time and again. And few, if any, are even asking the right questions.

During her Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was grilled about Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, and how long our troops will be in that strife-ridden country. But no one bothered to ask her a more important question: When and how will American foreign policy be adjusted to defeat the goals, not just the tactics, of our jihad opponents? . . .

Other nations take this as axiomatic--including our enemies. Article 3 of the Iranian constitution stipulates that Iran must base its foreign policy on "Islamic criteria, fraternal commitment to all Muslims, and unsparing support to the freedom fighters of the world."

I recommend that the United States do the same: state its goals and interests regarding the global jihad. This would involve a serious re-evaluation of American posture around the globe. . . .

[I]t is scandalous that so many years after President Bush announced that "you're either with the terrorists or with us," the United States still counts as friends and allies--or at least recipients of its largesse--so many states where jihadist activity is widespread.

• Tie foreign aid to the treatment of non-Muslims. A State Department that really had America's interests at heart would immediately stop all forms of American aid to Kosovo, Algeria, Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinians, Pakistan, Indonesia, and even Iraq and Afghanistan, and any other state, until each demonstrably ends all support--material, educational, and religious--for jihad warfare, and grants full equality of rights to any non-Muslim citizens.

  [Note from John: You've got to read Spencer to understand what he is talking about, here--the depth of what he is talking about: the implications of dhimmitude, the way it has been and is being practiced around the world today. We hear so little of it! . . . When Spencer talked about the concept of universal human rights as a Christian and Jewish and definitely not a Muslim concept he is referring to such things as (extremely minor example!) Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Sistani, "who has been hailed by many in the West as a reformer, a moderate, and a hope for democracy in Iraq and the Middle East at large," making a list of things that are "essentially najis" (i.e., "unclean"). Among the things that are najis: urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, pigs, kafirs (i.e., non-Muslims).
  
  "[T]he entire body of a Kafir, including his hair and nails, and all liquid substances of his body, are najis," Sistani declared. And yet he is respected throughout the Western world! Why? "Imagine the international outcry if, say, Jerry Falwell [had] said that non-Christians were on the level of pigs, feces, and dog sweat," Spencer suggests (p. 165).
  
  Please. As I said, this is an extremely minor example. But it illustrates the disdain with which non-Muslims are viewed and the social and legal treatment they receive in most Muslim societies.]

• Reconfigure our global alliances on the same basis. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the other exporters of jihad should be put on notice. Continued friendly relations with the United States absolutely depend on an immediate and comprehensive renunciation of the jihad, including a reformation of schools that teach it. [Remember my post about Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the young man educated in a Saudi-sponsored school in the United States. --JAH] It cannot be enough for a state to denounce or renounce terror; each must stop Islamic jihad as a means of undermining the integrity of other states. . . .
  
  
• [Require] Muslim states [if the United States is to recognize them] to renounce sharia's expansionist imperative. To be a friend of the United States, each state must renounce any intention to try to realize the Islamic goals enunciated by Pakistani Islamic leader Syed Abul Ala Maududi, who declared that when Muslims are ruled by non-Muslims, "the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge [the unbelievers] from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life." . . . This is the [declared] goal of the jihadists today; it should be the fundamental defining point of U.S. alliances with Muslim states.
  
  
• Initiate a full-scale Manhattan Project to find new energy sources--so that the needed reconfiguration of our alliances can be more than just words. . . .
  
  During World War II, the United States invested millions and set the brightest scientific minds in the world on the atomic bomb project. Is a similar effort being made today to end our dependence on Saudi oil? . . .

[D]oes anyone in the State Department have the will to advocate these and other measures? Or is it only regimes like the bloody mullahocracy in Tehran that are allowed to speak openly about their principles and goals, and take all the necessary measures for their own defense? . . . Secretary Rice needs to ask and answer these questions.

The State Department . . . reflexively thinks it can work with the Islamic jihadists--as if dropping care packages into Indonesia will somehow blunt the force of the Maududi dictum that "non-Muslims have absolutely no right to seize the reins of power."

The State Department needs to come to grips with the fact that it is facing a totalitarian, supremacist, and expansionist ideology--and plan accordingly.

After laying out these, what we might call "national" objectives--objectives that I think any and all Americans, individually and collectively, can help institute, Spencer then turns to how we might defeat the jihad "domestically." Before I get to that, however, I want to respond to the repeated question: "But how can I "help institute" national objectives?"

• I think you do that by speaking up, by forcing the issue onto the national stage. (Notice that this force is non-violent, by the way!). . . .

Perhaps less frequently, but still, occasionally,

• I believe each and every one of us can write letters to the editors of local and national periodicals . . . to our congressional representatives, . . . to the president, . . . to our friends.
  
• We can keep it in front of our friends and neighbors by means other than writing: simply by talking about it.
  
  As several people have noted: "we," seem happy to call each other's attention to issues of pollution and global warming and s*xual impropriety and federal budgets and presidential candidates and abortion and euthanasia and GLBT issues and on and on. . . . Why not this issue as well?

Anyway.

After laying these things out, Spencer comes very much closer to home and to each one of us individually.

"The first thing we need in order to defeat the jihad at home is an informed citizenry," he writes. And so, he urges,

• Read the Qur'an.

  [I]n the United States, the idea that knowing something about Islam and the Qur'an might help clarify some issues regarding the War on Terror meets with ridicule, indifference, or charges of 'racism.' . . . [But is] it really astonishing that Americans would read the Qur'an to discover the motivation of men who [cite] the Qur'an repeatedly in their communiqués to explain their actions? . . . [F]or all the dark suspicions of the PC crowd about Bush's Christianity, modern American foreign policy has never proceeded according to Biblical or Christian precepts, either explicitly or implicitly--except perhaps in the military's zeal to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible (a principle that has been contravened more than once). The contrast with Osama bin Laden's Qur'an-filled messages should be immediately obvious--except to those who don't wish to see it, or who wish to obscure it.

  --The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 229-230

• Report honestly about jihadist activity in the U.S. and the West.

  An informed citizenry . . . demands responsible reporting from the media and honesty from law enforcement officials about jihadist attacks in the United States. . . . Official unwillingness to draw obvious conclusions hinders our ability to make informed decisions about how to conduct the War on Terror. It has to stop.

  --The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 230

  I think being awakened to this problem angered me more than almost everything else I read in Spencer's book. I was shocked and outraged at the examples Spencer presented (pp. 205-206) of exactly the things he is saying an informed citizenry must demand stop--most especially the dishonesty from law enforcement officials about jihadist attacks. Just a couple examples from a longer list:
  
  
  • the FBI initially saying that "there's nothing to indicate terrorism" when Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet killed two people at the El Al counter at LAX on July 4, 2002;
    
    
  • officials finding "no link to terrorism" when a co-pilot of EgyptAir flight 990 kills 217 people by crashing the plane on October 31, 1999, . . . even though the cockpit voice recorder catches him repeating, 11 times, as the plane plummets to earth: "I rely on Allah, I rely on Allah, I rely on Allah. . . . "
    
    
  • Or how about the story of firefighters conducting a routine inspection in a Brooklyn supermarket who

    found two hundred automobile airbags and a room lined with posters of Osama bin Laden and beheadings in Iraq. An element in the airbags can be used to make pipe bombs. The owner of the building, according to the New York Post, "served jail time in the late 1970s and early 1980s for arson, reckless endangerment, weapons possession and conspiracy, according to the records." But officials were definite: The hidden stockpile had nothing to do with terrorism."

    It doesn't?" Spencer asks. "What does it have to do with, then? Macramé?"
    
    
  • Similarly,

    when explosions killed fifteen people and injured over a hundred at an oil refinery in Texas City, Texas, on March 23, 2005, the FBI quickly ruled out terrorism as a possible cause. When a group calling itself Qaeda al-Jihad and another Islamic group both claimed responsibility, the FBI was still dismissive. But then it came to light that investigators did not visit the blast site until eight days after the explosions and after they ruled out terrorism as a possibility. A more independent-minded investigator asked, "How do you rule out one possibility when you don't have any idea what the cause is?" Still later came the revelation that initial reports of a single blast were inaccurate; there were as many as five different explosions at the refinery.
    
    It may still be possible that these blasts were accidental, and that five distinct things went wrong at the refinery to cause five separate explosions at around the same time. And maybe there was no terrorist involvement. But how did the FBI know that before even investigating?

  • And then, the story that completely put me over the edge (from p. 214):

    On November 2, 2004, Theo van Gogh was shot dead by a Muslim on an Amsterdam street. . . . His assailant was a Dutch Moroccan who was wearing traditional Islamic clothing. After shooting van Gogh several times, he stabbed him repeatedly, slit his throat with a butcher knife, and left a note on the body containing verses from the Qur'an and threats to several public figures who had opposed the flood of Muslim immigrants into the Netherlands. Yet Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende said, "Nothing is known about the motive" of the killer.

    What!!!??!!! I am incensed.


• Reclassify Muslim organizations.

  Any Muslim group in America that does not explicitly renounce, in word and in deed, any intention now or in the future to replace the Constitution of the United States with Islamic sharia should be classified as a political rather than a religious organization, and should be subject to all the responsibilities and standards to which political organizations must adhere.

  --The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 230

• Take pride in Western culture.

  Western civilization has given the world notions of human rights that are universally accepted (except in the Islamic world), technological advancement beyond the wildest dreams of people of previous ages, and a great deal more. Yet our own leaders and teachers tell us we must stand before the world in a posture of shame.
  
  It's time to say "enough," and teach our children to take pride in their own heritage. To know that they have a culture and a history of which they can and should be grateful; . . . and that their homes and families are worth defending against those who want to take them away and are willing to kill to do so.

  --The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 231

Let me confess, here: Steyn's and Spencer's books have changed me. As one who has written and intends, yet, to write notes about world and American history: these books have altered my perceptions and I realize I have a lot of work to do.
*****The background to Spencer's practical proposals is so deep, I wish I could quote half of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), but I can't. So I urge you to read it on your own. Spencer provides an introduction to Islam that, as I believe I said elsewhere, goes far beyond the standard "Five Pillars" approach. It has convinced me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Islam is, indeed, a religion from which Christians should desire to rescue its current--and future--victims . . . not merely for the next life, but very much for the sake of this life as well.

Mark Steyn's America Alone, VII--So What Can We Do? Part 2

This post is brought to you thanks to input from a friend who was reading Steyn along with me and pulled "suggestions" that he didn't list quite so nicely in a numbered sequence.

Overall, Steyn said, we need to pursue a policy of decentralized self-reliance; refuse to embrace the siren song of more centralized government.

[We] embrace big government at [our] peril. The silliest thing Dick Cheney ever said was a couple of weeks after September 11: "One of the things that's changed so much since September 11 is the extent to which people do trust the government--big shift--and value it, and have high expectations for who we can do." Really? I'd say September 11 vindicated perfectly a decentralized, federalist, conservative view of the state: what worked that day was municipal government, small government, core government--the firemen, the NYPD cops, rescue workers. What flopped--big-time . . . --was federal government, the FBI, CIA, INS, FAA, and all the other hotshot, money-no-object, fancypants acronyms.

America Alone, 183-184

Steyn compares the U.S. immigration service to Amazon.

"Amazon is a more efficient data miner than U.S. Immigration. Is it to do with their respective budgets? No. Amazon's system is very cheap, but it's in the nature of government to do things worse, and slower."

On a morning when big government failed, the only good news came from private individuals. The first three planes were effectively an airborne European Union, where the rights of the citizens had been appropriated by the FAA's flying nanny state. Up there were the air is rarefied, all your liberties have been regulated away. . . . But, on the fourth plane, they . . . used their cell phones, discovered that FAA regulations weren’t going to save them, and then acted as free men, rising up against the terrorists and, at the cost of their own lives, preventing that flight carrying on to its target in Washington. . . . The Cult of Regulation failed, but the great American virtues of self-reliance and innovation saved the lives of thousands: "Let's roll!" as Mr. Beamer told his fellow passengers.

America Alone, 185

My friend summarized the specifics of Steyn's message as follows:

• Be PRO-active instead of RE-active.
• Act as free men and women. Take responsibility for yourself!
• Have the government enlist/hire/contract with private database-marketing firms like Amazon to perform INS functions--that way, no flight school would get a letter, two years after the students died from having flown a commercial jet into the World Trade Center, that said students are being granted student visas.
• "Restore the balance between the state and the citizen . . ." (pg. 188). That means we have to vote for candidates who will actively work and we ourselves must also actively work to "shrink the state" (p. 190) and take more personal responsibility for our lives.
• "[R]estore advantages to parenthood . . . " (p. 189).
• "We need to redirect the system to telescope education into a much shorter period" (p.191). --How about reworking the school-church nexus altogether?
• "[U]se [our] own judgment in assessing a situation . . . " (p. 188).

  [M]y basic rule of thumb since September 11: anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing, not just for the war on terror but for the national character in a more general sense.
  
  Charles Clarke, formerly Britain's home secretary, gave a revealing glimpse into the big-government mentality in a column for the Times defending the latest allegedly necessary security measure: "ID cards will potentially make a difference to any area of everyday life where you already have to prove your identity--such as opening a bank account, going abroad on holiday, claiming a benefit, buying goods on credit and renting a video."
  
  "Renting a video"? That sounds about right. When you go to Blockbuster, you'll need your national ID card. But if you're an Algerian terrorist cell coming in on the Eurostar from Paris to blow up Big Ben, you won't. And its requirement for the routine transactions of daily life--"opening a bank account . . . buying goods on credit"--will . . . relieve bank managers and store clerks of the need to use their own judgment in assessing the situation. You'd have to have an awful lot of faith in government to think that's a good thing.
  
  Britain's religious "hate crimes" law is another example of . . . attempt[ing] to supplant human judgment with government management: the multicultural state is working out so well that we can no longer be trusted to regulate our own interactions with our neighbors. Islam, unlike Anglicanism, is an explicitly political project: sharia is a legal system, but, unlike English Common Law or the Napoleonic Code, for the purposes of public debate it will henceforth enjoy the special protection of Her Majesty's Government. Given that the emerging Muslim lobby groups are already the McDonald's coffee plaintiff of ethno-cultural grievance-mongers, you can be certain they'll make full use of any new law. Political debate in Europe is already hedged in by excessive squeamishness: Holland's "immigration problem" is a Muslim problem, France's "youth problem" is a Muslim problem, the "terrorism threat" that necessitates those British ID cards is in reality an Islamic threat. How is preventing honest discussion of the issue going to make citizens any safer?
  
  The term "nanny state" hardly covers a society where you need retinal-scan ID in order to rent Mary Poppines but you're liable for prosecution if you express your feelings too strongly after the next bombing.

  America Alone, 187-188

And then this one final set of comments, from the very end of Steyn's book, on pp. 213-214:

It is absurd: how can the most advanced society in human history fall to a bunch of ignorant death cultists? Well, who do you think advanced societies do fall to? Something worse, something barbarous, something prepared to fight when you're not.

Steyn quotes from an 1898 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--yes, that Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes--novel, The Tragedy of the Korosko (otherwise known as A Desert Drama), "the story of a party of Anglo-American-French tourists on a trip up the Nile who wind up getting kidnapped by the al Qaeda of the day--the followers of the Mahdi."

"It's my opinion that we have been the policemen of the world long enough," says Cecil Brown, a Brit.

"We policed the seas for pirates and slavers. Now we police the land for Dervishes and brigands and every sort of danger to civilization. There is never a mad priest or a witch doctor, or a firebrand of any sort on this planet, who does not report his appearance by sniping the nearest British officer. One tires of it at last. If a Kurd breaks loose in Asia Minor, the world wants to know why Great Britain does not keep him in order. If there is a military mutiny in Egypt, or a Jihad in the Sudan, it is still Great Britain who has to set it right. And all to an accompaniment of curses such as the policeman gets when he seizes a ruffian among his pals. We get hard knocks and no thanks, and why should we do it? Let Europe do its own dirty work."

"Well," said Colonel Cochrane, crossing his legs and leaning forward with the decision of n man who has definite opinions, "I don't at all agree with you, Brown, and I think that to advocate such a course is to take a very limited view of our national duties. I think that behind national interests and diplomacy and all that there lies a great guiding force--a Providence, in fact--which is forever getting the best out of each nation and using it for the good of the whole. When a nation ceases to respond, it is time that she went into hospital for a few centuries, like Spain or Greece--the virtue has gone out of her. A man or a nation is not placed upon this earth to do merely what is pleasant and what is profitable. It is often called upon to carry out what is both unpleasant and unprofitable, but if it is obviously right it is mere shirking not to undertake it."

Will the West as a whole--and we in the United States, in particular, shirk our duty to do good?

Mark Steyn's America Alone, VI--So What Can We Do?

Steyn's book, together with the input of a friend from Canada, has pushed me to read further on the subject of Islam and America.

I have now read The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer and I try to keep up on Dhimmi Watch and Jihad Watch.

So one becomes all alarmed . . . and then????? What can (or should) we do as a result of knowing or discovering the things Steyn points out? Steyn suggests several things. Spencer suggests many more. And then, through the auspices of Jihad Watch, I bumped into a third commentator who provides several additional very useful insights.

So let me pass along what I have learned.

I'll share Steyn's here, in this post, since his recommendations are from his book.

I'm not sure I "buy" too many of them as being truly useful, but they're not a bad start for a person like me who hasn't even begun to think about these issues on his own. . . .

1. Support women's rights--real rights, not feminist pieties--in the Muslim world. This is the biggest vulnerability in Islam. . . . The overwhelming majority of females in Continental battered women's shelters are Muslim--which gives you some sense of what women in the Middle East might do if they had any women's shelters to go to. When half the population of these societies is a potential source of dissent, we need to use it.
   [Note from John: I'm not sure Steyn is correct about how readily Muslim women will be to go up against the system. As he and others have noted, it is often the women who are at the forefront of raising suicide bombers. And it astonishes me how many female converts speak up to say they feel "liberated" by Islam!]
2. Roll back Wahhabi, Iranian, and other ideological exports that have radicalized Muslims on every continent. We have an ideological enemy and we need to wage ideological war.
   [Note from John: I like the concept, here. I'm not sure how the U.S. government or "we the people" are supposed to do this. But the government could certainly start with the Wahhabi and jihadist imams in the U.S. mosques. --Spencer provides a much more finessed perspective in his recommendations (yet to come).]
3. Support economic and political liberty in the Muslim world, even if it means unsavory governments: an elected unsavory government is still better than a dictatorial unsavory government. It's not necessary for Syria and Egypt to become Minnesota and New Zealand. All that's necessary is for them to become something other than what they are now. And on the bumpy road to liberty, every Muslim regime that has to preoccupy itself with intern dissent has less time to foment trouble beyond its borders.
4. Ensure that Islamic states that persecute non-Muslims are denied international legitimacy and excluded and marginalized in international bodies.
   [That, I can applaud!]
5. Throttle the funding of mosques, madrassas, think tanks, and other activities in America and elsewhere by Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others.
   [Note from John: Again: sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me!]
6. Develop a strategy for countering Islamism on the ideological front. Create a civil corps to match America's warrior corps and use it to promote alternative institutions, structures, and values through a post-imperial equivalent to Britain's Colonial Office, albeit under whatever wussy name is deemed acceptable: Department of Global Community Outreach or whatever. . . .
   [Note from John: Not sure what he means]
7. Marginalize and euthanize the UN, NATO, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and other September 10 transnational organizations and devote the energy wasted on them to results-oriented multilateralism.
8. Cease bankrolling unreformable oil dictatorships by a long-overdue transformation of the energy industry.
   [Note from John: I'll buy that!]
9. End the Iranian regime.
10. Strike militarily when the opportunity presents itself.

--America Alone, 205-206

I have to confess: I'm not very comfortable--indeed, I'm not comfortable at all--in the arena of Steyn's geopolitical recommendations. But I thought I should pass them along since it is he who "opened my eyes" to the issues we're discussing.

Mark Steyn's America Alone, V--Part Two (Chapters 4 through 6), Cont'd.

A continuation of my comments from June 10.

More stuff in Mark Steyn's America Alone that shocks and bothers me.

Let me write up some of his stuff about "moderate Islam."

I'll start with the continuation of Miss Farooq's story (the young Canadian Muslim woman who hates Canada).

Miss Farooq's father is a pharmacist who fills prescriptions at a military base in Wainwright, Alberta, and says he supports the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry on their mission in Afghanistan. After the terror cell was cracked, Mohammed Umer Farooq told the press that his daughter's views--hating Canada, in favor of shipping homosexuals to Saudi Arabia to be executed or crushed, etc.--were new to him, but that she's always been "more religious" than he is. He described her as "100 percent religious" and himself as "30 percent religious."

Nada Farooq is typical of a significant minority of young Muslims raised in the West by "moderate Muslim" parents. . . . Unlike her parents, Nada Farooq has no natural Pakistani identity and she rejects her thin, reedy multicultural Canadian identity, choosing instead a pan-Islamic consciousness that trnscnds nationality. . . . Growing up in a Toronto suburb, she found recent Chechen history more inspiring than Canadian history, assuming she was taught any.

How many Nada Farooqs are there? On the first anniversary of the July 7, 2005, Tube bombings, the Times of London commissioned a poll of British Muslims. Among the findings:

• 16 percent say that while the attacks may have been wrong, the cause was right.
• 13 percent think that the four men who carried out the bombings should be regarded as "martyrs."
• 7 percent agree that suicide attacks on civilians in the United Kingdom can be justified in some circumstances, rising to 16 percent for a military target. [Compare those numbers to the May 23 report from the Pew Research Center about American Muslims! --JAH]
• 2 percent would be proud if a family member decided to join al Qaeda. 16 percent would be "indifferent."

If this is a war, then that is a substantial fifth column. There are, officially, one million Muslims in London, half of them under twenty-five. If 7 percent think suicide attacks on civilians are justified, that's 70,000 potential supporters in Britain's capital city. Most of them will never bomb a bus or even provide shelter or a bank account to someone who does. But some of them will. As September 11 demonstrated, you only have to find nineteen stout-hearted men, and from a talent pool of 70,000 that's not bad odds.

--America Alone, 75-76

Oh, let's keep going.

[A]ccording to one poll, over 60 percent of British Muslims want to live under sharia in the United Kingdom. Another poll places the percentage favoring "hard-line" sharia at a mere 40 percent. So there's one definition of a "moderate Muslim": he's a Muslim who wants stoning for adultery to be introduced in Liverpool, but he's a "moderate" because he can't be bothered flying a plane into a skyscraper to get it. . . .

If there were a "moderate Muslim" lobby--one that, say, believed that suicide bombing is always wrong, even against Israelis, or that supported the liberation of Iraq on the grounds that the Iraqi people are in favor of it--your average Western government would immediately be suspicious that such a group was not "authentically" Muslim. Whereas, if you oppose the occupation of Iraq and seek to justify the depravity of Hamas, you have instant credibility. And so government ministers in Western nations spend most of their time taking advice on the jihad from men who agree with its aims. You can pluck out news items at random: in London, a religious "hate crimes" law that makes honest discussion of Islam even more difficult; in Ottawa, a government report that recommends legalizing polygamy; in Seattle, the introduction of gender-separate Muslim-only swimming sessions in municipal pools. . . .

--America Alone, 76-78

Okay. Here's one for one of my pacifist friends. She wrote,

Yes, the Quran directs Muslims to use the sword against unbelievers. But most of them aren't getting out there and doing it. People everywhere are pretty much more willing to live comfortable peaceful lives raising their families, holding down stable jobs, looking after matters of education, and generally being normal than they are interested in engaging in warfare of any kind. And the vast majority of Muslims in the world are living normal lives and neglecting warfare. Even though their holy book commands it.

I think Steyn replies pretty well here:

The "moderate Muslim" is not entirely fictional. But it would be more accurate to call them quiescent Muslims. In the 1930s, there were plenty of "moderate Germans," and a fat lot of good they did us or them. . . .

We know, because Western politicians and religious leaders tell us so incessantly, that the "vast majority" of Muslims do not support terrorism. Yet how vast is the minority that does? One percent? Ten percent?

Here are a couple of examples that suggest it might be rather more.

Dr. Mahfooz Kanwar, a sociology professor at Mount Royal College in Calgary, went along to a funeral at the city's largest mosque and was discombobulated when the man who led the prayers--in Urdu--said, "Oh, God, protect us from the infidels, who pollute us with their vile ways."

Dr. Kanwar said, "How dare you attack my country," and pointed out to the crowd that he'd known this mean for thirty years, most of which time he'd been living on welfare and thus the food on his table came courtesy of the taxes of the hardworking infidels.

As Licia Corbella wrote in the Calgary Sun: "Guess which of the two men is no longer welcome at the Sarcee Trail mosque?"

Final score: Radical Islam 1, Moderate Muslims 0.

Here's another example: Souleiman Ghali was born in Palestine and, as he put it, raised to hate "Shiites, Christians--and especially Jews." After emigrating to America, he found himself rethinking these old prejudices and in 1993 helped found a mosque in San Francisco. As Mr. Ghali's website states: "Our vision is the emergence of an American Muslim identity founded on compassion, respect, dignity, and love."

That's hard work, especially given the supply of imams.

In 2002, Mr. Ghali fired an imam who urged California Muslims to follow the sterling example of Palestinian suicide bombers. Safwat Morsy is Egyptian and speaks barely any English, but he knew enough to sue Mr. Ghali's mosque for wrongful dismissal and was awarded $400,000.

So far, so typical. But the part of the story that matters is that the firebrand imams had a popular following, and Mr. Morsy's firing was the final straw. Mr. Ghali was forced off the board and out of any role in the mosque he founded. And, as the Wall Street Journal reported, Safwat Morsy--a man who thinks American Muslims should be waddling around in Semtex belts--is doing a roaring trade: "His mosque is looking to buy a building to accommodate the capacity crowds coming these days for Friday prayers."

That's Radical Islam 2, Moderate Muslims 0. . . .

At this point it's time to throw in another round of "of courses": of course most Western Muslims aren't terrorists and of course most have no desire to be terrorists. One gathers anecdotally that they're secure enough in their Muslim identity to dismiss the fire-breathing imam down the street as a kind of vulgar novelty act for the kids--in the same way that middle-class suburban white parents sigh and roll their eyes when Junior comes home with "Slap Up My B*tch" or "I'm Gonna Shoot That Cop Right After I F--- His Ho" or whatever the latest popular vocal ditty is. But, aside from the few brave but marginalized men like Mr. Ghali, one can't help noticing that the most prominent "moderate Muslims" would seem to be more accurately designated as apostate or ex-Muslims.

The pseudonymous apostate Ibn Warraq makes an important distinction: there are moderate Muslims, but no moderate Islam. Millions of Muslims just want to get on with their lives, and there are--or were--remote corners of the world where, far from Mecca, Muslim practices reached accommodation with local customs. But all of the official schools of Islamic jurisprudence commend sharia and violent jihad. So a "moderate Muslim" can find no formal authority to support his moderation. And to be a "moderate Muslim" publicly means standing up to the leaders of your community. . . .

And even if you're truly a "moderate" Muslim, why should you be expected to take on the most powerful men in Islam when the West's media and political class merely pander to them? What kind of support does the culture give to those who speak out against the Islamists? The Iranians declared a fatwa on Salman Rushdie and he had to go into hiding for more than a decade while his government and others continued fawning on the regime that issued the death sentence. The Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh spoke out and was murdered, and the poseur dissenters of Hollywood were too busy congratulating themselves on their courage and bravery in standing up to Bush even to mention their poor dead colleague in the weepy Oscar montage of the year's deceased.

To speak out against the Islamists means to live in hiding and under armed security in the heart of the so-called "free world." Meanwhile, Yale offers a place on its campus to a former ambassador-at-large for the murderous Taliban regime.

--America Alone, 86-88

Well. I've spent way too many hours typing up all these quotes. I get the feeling I'm not actually catching too many people's attention by engaging in this work.

I'll stop here.

******
No. No I can't stop there.

One more. This cuts a bit too close to home.

Whatever the arguments for and against "gay marriage," there are never going to be many takers for it. But the justifications for same-sex marriage are already being used to advance the cause of polygamy, and there are far more takers for that. It's already practiced de facto if not de jure in France, Ontario, and many other Western jurisdictions, and government agencies, such as the United Kingdom's pensions ministry, have already begun according polygamy piecemeal legal recognition for the purposes of inheritance law.

Neither feminists nor homosexuals seem obvious allies for Islam, but lobby groups have effortlessly mastered the lingo, techniques, and pseudo-grievances of both. . . .

As someone who's called Islamophobic and homophobic every day of the week, I can't help marveling at the speed and skill with which Muslim lobby groups have mastered the language of victimhood so adroitly used by the gay lobby. If I were the latter, I'd be a little miffed at these Ahmed-come-latelys. "Homophobia" was always abroad: people who are antipathetic to gays are not afraid of them in any real sense. The invention of a phony-baloney "phobia" was a way of casting opposition to the gay political agenda as a kind of mental illness. . . .

On the other hand, "Islamophobia" is not phony or even psychological but very literal--if you're a Dutch member of parliament or British novelist or Danish cartoonist in hiding under threat of death or a French schoolgirl in certain suburbs getting jeered at as an infidel *****, your Islamophobia is highly justified. But Islam's appropriation of the gay lobby's forming of the debate is very artful. It's the most explicit example of how Islam uses politically correct self-indulgent victimology as a cover.

You'll recall that most Western media outlets declined to publish those Danish cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed. [By the way: I have looked at them. They are mild. If you haven't seen them yet, you can find them here. The commentary that goes along with them, I think, is illuminating.--JAH] Thus, even as they were piously warning of a rise in bogus "Islamophobia"--i.e., entirely justified concerns over Islamic terrorism and related issues--they were themselves suffering from genuine Islamophobia--i.e., a very real fear that, if they published those cartoons, an angry mob would storm their offices. It was a fine example of how the progressive mind's invented psychoses leave it without any words to describe real dangers.

--America Alone, 84-85

May we not be left without any words to describe real dangers!

Really, truly, ultimately: aren't we talking about freedom of speech . . . or a lack thereof?

A Moderate Muslim from Indonesia . . .

Suara Merdeka Cyber News printed a story about a supposed communist threat to Banda Aceh, Indonesia. The story was translated into English and reprinted in IndonesiaMatters.com).

In sum: Muntasir Hamid, the head of the Banda Aceh parliament, said that "communists, or communist tendencies, are about to enter Aceh, or are already in the process of doing so." Therefore,

clerics, village heads, important figures, and Islamic school teachers, would take an active role in heading off the danger and would keep a lookout for any signs of foreign influence, like communism. Aceh was increasingly a focus of world attention, he went on, and the readiness to deal with communism had to be increased.

Hamid hoped that sharia law would provide a solid foundation for the people’s lives and, for example, help them to overcome the communist tendency problem.

Several people commented on the story. One expressed the idea that both communism and democracy are "ideal" but either inapplicable or unworkable in the real world. Still, "There is nothing wrong with being idealistic, [is there]? . . . [And t]here is nothing wrong to try, [is there]?"

I was stunned by how someone who goes by the name Mohammed Khafi replies:

In principle Sharia is also good as a system of both Law and Government, but the implementation is so corrupted by ancient Arab traditions, and the lies and fabrications of Sunnah and Hadith that it is actually a mockery of Allah’s true spirit and principles in Al Quran.

An uncorrupted example of Sharia in application is the treaty signed between Prophet Mohammed and the Monks of St Catherines Monastery in Sinai, it reads:

This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them.
Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.
No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight.
The Muslims are to fight for them.
If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.
Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.
No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).

This document still exists in the monastery to this day.

Another example is to the Najran code of Conduct which The Prophet issued to his followers.

In the year 10 A.H. (631 CE), Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) received a delegation of sixty Christians from Najran in Medinah. The territory of Najran was located south of Bani Khath’am near Yemen, about 450 miles south of Medinah. They were received in the Prophet’s mosque, and the Prophet allowed them to pray in the mosque, which they did facing East. This group of Christians followed Byzantine rite.

In spite of doctrinal disagreements, the Prophet concluded a treaty with the people of Najran. The Prophet dictated the terms of the treaty to Abdullah b. Abu Bakr, who served as one of his scribes, and it was witnessed by five companions whose names are: Abu Sufyan b. Harb, Ghilan b. Amr, Malik b. Auf, Aqra’ b. Habis, and Mughira b. Shu’ba. The treaty provided religious and administrative autonomy for non-Muslim citizens of the Islamic State. All sincere Muslim rulers have adhered to the founding principles of this treaty in managing the affairs of non-Muslim subjects throughout the centuries.

The text of the Code of Conduct:

To the Christians of Najran and its neighbouring territories, the security of God and the pledge of Mohammed the Prophet, the Messenger of God, are extended for their lives, their religion, their land, their property — to those thereof who are absent as well as to those who are present — to their caravans, their messengers and their images. The status quo shall be maintained: none of their rights [religious observances] and images shall be changed. No bishop shall be removed from his bishopric, nor a monk from his monastery, nor a sexton from his church … For what in this instrument is contained they have the security of God, and the pledge of Mohammed, the Prophet forever, until doomsday, so long as they give right counsel [to Moslems] and duly perform their obligations, provided they are not unjustly charged therewith.”

As can be seen even the Defenders of the Islamic Faith in Saudi Arabia do not appear to uphold the Spirit of these documents! What hope is there for their brainwashed followers to be able to do it?

Peace

As I continue my studies of Islam, honestly, these revelations don't shock me. They give me mild hope that a more "moderate" Islam can win over the more radical version. However, I also realize that, according to Robert Spencer (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad), the problem is not a lack of such references, but the fact that most Muslims believe the accomodationalist verses of the Qur'an and the peaceful activities of Muhammad all occurred early in his career. Later in his career he became far more militant and disinclined to brook any rivals of any sort.